“Well, if a girl could stand the trail, it doesn’t look dangerous.”
“Looks are deceptive, child,––and this isn’t just any old girl! It’s a rare bird, it’s tougher than whalebone and possessed of a wise little devil. She froze to Kit as a compadre at first chance. He headed back to Mesa Blanca. I reckon they’d make it,––barring accidents.”
“Mesa Blanca? That’s the Whitely outfit?”
“Um!” assented Pike, “but I reckon Whitely’s hit the trail by now. There’s no real profit in raising stock for the warriors down there; each band confiscates what he needs, and gives a promissory note on an empty treasury.”
“Well, the attraction must be pretty strong to hold him down there in spite of conditions,” said Billie gloomily.
“Attraction? Sure. Kit’s gone loco on that attraction,” agreed the old prospector, and then with a reminiscent light in his tired old eyes he added, “I reckon there’s no other thing so likely to snare a man on a desert trail. You see, Billie-child, it’s just as if the great God had hid a treasure in the beginning of the world to stay hid till the right lad ambled along the trail, and lifted the cover, and when a fellow has youth, and health and not a care in the world, the search alone is a great game––And when he finds it!––why, Billie, the dictionary hasn’t words enough to tell the story!”
“No––I––I reckon not,” said his listener in a small voice, and when he looked around to speak to her again she had disappeared, and across the patio Doña Luz was coming towards him in no good humor.
“How is it that poor little one weeps now when you are returned, and not at other times?” she demanded. “Me, I have my troubles since that day they find the Don Filipe shot dead,––Jesusita give him rest! That child is watching the Sonora trail and waiting since that day, but no tears until you are come. I ask you how is the way of that?”
Captain Pike stared at her reflectively.
“You are a bringer of news, likewise a faithful warden,” he observed. “I’m peaceably disposed, and not wise to your lingo. Billie and me were talking as man to man, free and confidential, and no argument. There were no weeps that I noticed. What’s the reason why?”